Author Archive: Retro

The fairies of Oz gather in the forest of Burzee one evening and weave a magic cloak that gives the wearer one wish, so long as it has not been stolen. The man in the moon tells them that their messenger should give it to the first miserable person she sees. Two children, Fluff and her younger brother “Bud” (a child’s attempt at “brother,” which stuck), have just lost their father and are taken by Aunt Rivette to live in Nole, the capital city of Noland, where the king has just died without heir. The messenger gives Fluff the cloak, who wishes to be happy again, while a legal loophole places Bud on the throne, and they empty the treasury to buy toys. Their pet mule Nickodemus is captured by robbers and puts together a small animal army (including the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, the Lonesome Zoop, the Woozy, and others) to battle the [...]

An inventor dreams that his newly designed airship takes flight.

Shy Joel Parker seems bound for nowhere, until Abbie Nettleton enters his life. With her prodding, Joel goes from timid nobody to a baseball star with bravura.

An unscrupulous and greedy capitalist speculator decides to corner the wheat market for his own profit, establishing complete control over the markets.

Frederick Ward is accused of cattle theft and sent to Cockatoo island for seven years. After he escapes he finds that his fiancée has died of grief. For revenge he undertakes a life of crime.

Portrays two teenage girls who are safeguarding money for their father and their reaction to a burglar’s attempt to steal it.

In this beautifully colored picture we see a dancing master in his studio playing the violin and giving instructions to a number of beautiful maidens. They go through a minuet, and suddenly their costumes change before our very eyes, seemingly without the aid of human hands. A fellow enters, and is very much interested in the dancing lesson, but casts a spell over the group, and instantly we see them disappear into space. The visitor is then transformed into Mephistopheles and takes the dancing teacher into a large laboratory, where stands a large caldron and into which he pours some sort of fluid from a number of bottles. Stirring up the mixture, flames soon begin to shoot out, and with them a long piece of marvelously colored silk. When the cloth is shaken out a beautiful girl in flowing silk robes steps forth and dances the serpentine. As she trips around, other girls appear, and [...]